Plausibility check: Bonaparte-Hannover Marriages.

I'm thinking of starting a TL where Napoleon manages to defeat Great Britain, resulting in a hegemonic and long-lasting French Empire (inspired by Zach's renowned Napoleonic TL).

Anyway, how plausible is this?: Marie-Louise dies sometime before 1820, and Napoleon marries Princess Charlotte of Wales, who would've been Queen had she not died in 1817. The English people and the House of Hannover would detest such a union, so what would the consequences be if Napoleon decides to force his will upon them? He would become the most powerful man in the world, master of continental Europe and now Prince Consort of England (the UK will split in my TL). If that marriage is plausible enough that I can write it, I also had the idea of marrying Napoleon II to Victoria, OTL's Queen Victoria. Napoleon II's half-brother would be King of England and its colonies. Thoughts? Too ASB?
 
It depends on what sort of defeat you're talking about. The problem for any TL posing Napoleonic victory is that Napoleon cannot make a situation where the other powers of mainland Europe (Prussia, Austria, Spain, Russia) no longer hate him and wish to overthrow him, because of the way he treated them (i.e. utter arrogance, constantly demanding supplication and humiliating them all the time) and the fact that his personality made it inevitable for him to treat them in such a way. He certainly couldn't get any of them on his side with any degree of permanence, and his favoured solution was puppetisation, which isn't exactly very endearing to the nation being puppetised (see: his utter, utter failure in Spain). Plus, of course, his endless expansionism made everyone else very alarmed. As such, the UK could always muster up a coalition against Napoleon. None of his victories IOTL were really permanent; those victories were essentially a case of his opponents agreeing to peace for the sake of taking a breather and preparing to fight him again.

One possible kind of Napoleonic victory is a successful invasion of Great Britain. That's… difficult, and it's not so simple as letting France achieve a major victory at Trafalgar (which itself isn't exactly trivial); you'd need rather more than that to get rid of the fact that to get rid of the fairly large numbers of British ships across the globe. Still, if it happens, then Napoleon can certainly enforce his will upon the UK… but if that is the case, it will certainly be a case of enforcing will at the point of a bayonet and not of any British acquiescence, because there's no way the UK would tolerate such a move unless it had literally no choice at all and it's undoubtedly true that in such a situation the UK would find plenty of allies in mainland Europe outraged at Napoleon doing something even more offensive and outrageous to the dignity of legitimate monarchies (a popular artillery officer crowning himself as an emperor not, of course, being considered even remotely legitimate by them) than he ever did IOTL. So we'd be looking at a War of the Nth Coalition, if he tried this, a war that would only end if the UK suffered something at least as bad as Tilsit. Even at Tilsit Napoleon didn't do anything so extreme as to force members of the Prussian royal family into his bed (and the UK would not regard it as a royal marriage, but as the Corsican Ogre forcing a British princess into his bed; they did not view Napoleon as a true monarch); it's doubtful that Prussia would have accepted such terms without being completely overrun, and the same holds for the UK.

Another kind is the more "conventional" scenario where he manages to Tilsit-style weaken all his enemies in Western and Central Europe and prevent them from joining any future coalitions. That's probably still a recipe for a war against Russia at some point down the line once the Tsar feels ready to defy him, but that might be fairly late. In this case, Napoleon's only hope of his regime's survival is if the Tsar chooses to fight Napoleon at a time of the Tsar's choosing, because if Napoleon attacks Russia at a time of Napoleon's choosing then his regime will suffer its OTL fate: the Russians withdrawing and thus taking advantage of his obsession with decisive battles and his inherent inability to "know when to fold 'em". If we presume that Napoleon's regime does survive (as the OP seems to wish) then at some point, quite a lot of decades into the future, once animosity has died down, such a thing might be possible—so not with Charlotte and Napoleon I, but perhaps some future Hanover and some future Bonaparte.

Then there's what we might call the "uber" Napoleonic victory where he manages to subdue his enemies in Western and Central Europe and invade and subdue Russia and invade and subdue the UK. I think my tone alone expresses just how serious a possibility I think this is, so I shall leave it at that.

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As for the colonies of the UK/England, that, unlike the others, is pretty ASB. We'd see exactly the same thing as we saw with the Spanish colonies: people rebelling against the Napoleonic puppet regime (and only an utter Napoleonic puppet regime would permit a marriage between Napoleon and Charlotte: the submission of tolerating Napoleonic France's existence is one thing, such enormous and extreme submission is another) and going for either independence or even some kind of agreement with the previous, non-puppet regime (lots of the rebellions in Spanish America were originally pro-Bourbon and anti-Bonaparte, and only turned anti-Bourbon and republican due to the Bourbons' poor treatment of them). I'm pretty sure that the British forces in India would prefer joining the service of various Indian states than serving a French Empire that had chosen to humiliate the UK even more grievously than it chose to humiliate any European great power IOTL (except Spain and, depending on what you regard as a great power, the Netherlands), and that the British officers in North America would prefer even annexation by the USA, let alone a Brazilian-esque UK-in-exile in the Americas (which I would think is likelier), to submission to Napoleon. After all, many British generals IOTL were so pro-American that they actually refused to fight the Americans, whom they regarded as essentially British, in spite of the fact that the Americans didn't think so; somehow there wasn't exactly that kind of sentiment with one of the most hated of all the UK's enemies in all its history.

So, broadly in summary: if Napoleon force the UK to give up Charlotte to him it can only be at the point of a bayonet. Because he is unable to rule the UK's colonies at a point of a bayonet, he will be unable to rule them.

That'll be it for today from me. Have a nice day. :)
 
Thank you for your response.

I had in mind an invasion of the British Isles by the French and their allies/puppets. It would be post-Tilsit, after Napoleon ensures his dominance in Germany. There will be no Peninsular War to bleed France's strength. Spain would be allied to France, by virtue of Napoleon having aided Ferdinand in securing his early ascension to the throne. IOTL the Spanish did seem to be somewhat accepting of the French regime, after all, they had ships at Trafalgar and allowed Napoleon to pass his army through their country in 1808.

I haven't worked out the specifics yet, but the French would land in England and Ireland. The Irish could rally behind the French. IIRC, there was an uprising around 1798 or so in OTL. I don't know what the Scottish sentiment would be, as I need to research more. Anyway, the British armies would be thoroughly defeated, being under the command of the unproven of the Duke of York, and England would be completely overrun. So yeah, Napoleon would be in position to do as he pleased.

What if he doesn't marry Charlotte, or any British princess? Could he instead demand some of Britain's colonial possesions? France was bitter for the territories lost during the Seven Years' War.
 
I agree, it CAN only be done at the point of a bayonet as Napoleon for one thing is Catholic and he needs to be in a position to overturn the Act of Succession. Britain would never tolerate a foreign ruler marrying the de facto heir to the throne, so again it has to have no choice. You'd basically need France to be able to pack both Houses with those who will acquiesce. As any votes are on a simple majority, it really doesn't matter if he can only muster up a few dozen peers prepared to vote for him, for example.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
So if he does carry this out, what repercussions can we expect? Rebellion in England and in the colonies? War against Austria, Prussia and Russia, maybe Sweden too?
 
I largely agree with Derek Pullem and Grey Wolf.

Rebellion would be putting it very mildly. To force the heir to the British throne into his bed, Napoleon would need a puppet government in Great Britain of Spain-level blatant slavishness; nothing less would suffice. In that case, Great Britain would be TTL's Peninsular War. When French troops are busy fighting en masse in Great Britain (and probably in Spain, too—avoiding the actual Peninsular War isn't very easy, given Napoleon's ambition and his almost certain response to seeing the "opportunity" of any unrest in the Spanish lands he coveted) the Austrians, at very least, will spot an opportunity; Russia and Prussia may well join them. Prussia, in particular, will never tolerate Tilsit indefinitely; it was a deliberate and cruel humiliation of such a kind as to make Versailles look like a half-a-second-long stern glance. Given that Great Britain is rather richer, more powerful and better-armed than Spain and also has the motivating factors (which Spain lacked) of a far more uncontroversially popular regime (Parliament was willing to take on mountains of debt and funded the war efforts of most of Europe multiple times over, for the sake of defeating Napoleon) plus the fact that the foreign invaders are Catholic, this would make France wish for OTL's Peninsular War.

There is a reason, I think, why so many First-French-Empire-survives TLs which try to maintain plausibility take the route of Napoleon dying and others (be they relatives or, usually, a regency council of some sort) managing to establish a more stable relationship with his enemies. Endlessly ambitious war-mongering expansionists with a love for subjugation and humiliation of their enemies and a refusal to contemplate the limits of their own power do not have stable relations with their neighbours; that's inevitable. If you want Napoleonic France's neighbours to ever not attack Napoleonic France, there are only two paths to go down: France is constantly strong enough to deter any war even with the rest of Europe combined, or France has relations with its neighbours that those neighbours can tolerate living with. You appear to be going down the former route, which, if I may put it thus, is non-trivial.

The Irish would indeed rally behind the French, I agree, and probably prove a bastion of support. Ultimately that would be as important to determining the final outcome as the pro-French movement in Poland IOTL: a factor, but hardly a decisive one.

Demanding colonial concessions would be far more possible. The British would be happy to lose their entire empire a thousand times over before letting Napoleon touch a hair on the head of the heir to their throne. There is the matter of whether France can project power so as to be able to actually hold whatever it has nominally gained, but if you're posing a First French Empire which stands even a chance of sustaining an occupation of Great Britain then you are already assuming a First French Empire far more navally powerful than its OTL self ever was, which should help in that regard.

There is the concern of whether British forces in any of the United Kingdom's colonies would actually obey an order to hand everything over to France, but I have already spoken of that so there's no need to repeat my previous monologue.

May I ask how long you plan to have Napoleon's empire be the master of Europe? It will fall apart on his death if nothing else—the other powers will smell blood in the water and there's no way that France will still have enough of an advantage to defeat them all by then—but it might well fall sometime before that; in this scenario a continued series of 'Wars of the Nth Coalition' would be very probable, perhaps even unavoidable.

In conclusion, I would say: plausible Napoleonic victory is hard.
 
The one thing France has on its side, is that Britain largely financed the various Coalitions against them and without British money Austria etc would find it harder to put together the force necessary, not to mention that there is no RN for them to rely on in this scenario.

France has London and its markets, however shattered, and it also has naval mastery, even if by default (eg the RN is laid up, scattered or unfinanced). Austria cannot challenge it, Russia can put the ships together but not operate that far from its bases without support (see Seniavin, Portugal etc)

The USA is going to be a fascinating wild card in this

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
May I ask how long you plan to have Napoleon's empire be the master of Europe? It will fall apart on his death if nothing else—the other powers will smell blood in the water and there's no way that France will still have enough of an advantage to defeat them all by then—but it might well fall sometime before that; in this scenario a continued series of 'Wars of the Nth Coalition' would be very probable, perhaps even unavoidable.

In conclusion, I would say: plausible Napoleonic victory is hard.

Well, to be honest my idea was to have a French Empire which lasts until the present day. Hard? Yes, but I've seen it done before. The puppet states (Holland, the Confederation of the Rhine, Naples, Poland) and France's allies (Spain mostly, maybe the Ottomans) should help in that regard. And Britain/England would have to be out of the war, so the Coalition would have no help from them.
 
Thanks everyone for their replies. Let's say no Charlotte-Napoleon marriage. Would having Napoleon II marry Victoria be more plausible? He is half Hapsburg after all.

Edit: I just remembered that anyone married to a Catholic was automatically excluded from succession to the UK's throne up to 2013 IIRC. How would that change things?
 
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Well, Victoria was rather infatuated with his cousin, Napoleon III, so it's not entirely impossible. But then again, at that time, she was also feeling a bit like Albert was taking her for granted, and the emperor seduced her, something the bookish Albert had never done.

As to the Act of Settlement it excludes all persons born papist, marrying papist etc from inheriting the crown. We've argued about this in several other threads that it does not bar a person already on the throne from marrying a Catholic. But it's just legal semantics.
 
Well, Victoria was rather infatuated with his cousin, Napoleon III, so it's not entirely impossible. But then again, at that time, she was also feeling a bit like Albert was taking her for granted, and the emperor seduced her, something the bookish Albert had never done.

As to the Act of Settlement it excludes all persons born papist, marrying papist etc from inheriting the crown. We've argued about this in several other threads that it does not bar a person already on the throne from marrying a Catholic. But it's just legal semantics.

Thanks for the clarification. Anyway, I'm thinking it'll be more realistic to have Marie Louise live longer, Britain surrender some colonies, and Napoleon II marry Victoria.
 
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